


Mirror Images

by iamisaac



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 06:31:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6943645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamisaac/pseuds/iamisaac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Narcissus, looking in a broken mirror...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror Images

It was strange seeing yourself reflected in another's eyes. No, not yourself: a twisted, bitter, mirror image - what, perhaps _might have been_ , had it not ben for... goodness knew what.

Sirius denied the likeness to himself, pretended he couldn't see it. The only similarity - the ONLY similarity, he told himself fiercely - was in the colour of their hair. No one else saw any other reflection, he was sure. No one say Sirius's cocky arrogance reflected in the other's sneering pride. They didn't compare Sirius's stubborn rejection of his haughty pure-blood family with the other's equally determined claiming of his status as Slytherin and son of a pure-blood mother. Nor did they realise that when Sirius rashly rushed into things with no prior thought, it was to distance himself from the thoughtfulness, the cold-blooded, cynical calculation of his nemesis, his mirror, Severus Snape.

Sirius saw in the other all he could have become, saw a path taken that he both hated and feared. Wondered whether he would have had the courage to take it, even as he cried his loathing of everything it stood for. Sirius hated the Dark Arts. Hated what he could have been. Hated Severus, for his representation of it all.

Hated him, yet couldn't stay away: it was as if there was a sick fascination that he could not rid himself of. Narcissus, looking into a broken mirror, loathing and lusting in the same moment.

And when they fucked, Sirius was rough, angry, as if by violence he could purge himself of all their similarities, deny once and finally that other side of himself.

He would never know what Severus saw in him. For that mirror, all too clear in so many ways, showed not the merest glimpse of Severus's twisted mind.


End file.
